A federal judge in Miami said Monday he wants the DeSantis and Trump administrations to provide more information about the legal agreement governing the operations at Alligator Alcatraz as lawyers representing detainees question the very legality of the immigration detention site.

“We need to get to the bottom of the interplay between the federal and state authorities on who’s running this thing,” U.S. District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II said during a virtual status conference hearing in a lawsuit that centers on questions about legal access issues.

The judge’s call for more information comes as immigration attorneys say the Department of Homeland Security is leaving detainees in limbo at the state-run detention camp in the Everglades, and that detainees are being held at the site without charges and without access to the courts. Understanding the legal authority of the site could have national implications, as the Trump administration seeks to replicate Alligator Alcatraz in other parts of the country.

The plaintiffs, which include attorneys with the American Civil Rights Union Foundation and Americans for Immigration Court, have sued over the access issue, and asked Ruiz to force the Trump administration to produce such an agreement to provide clarity on the site’s legal responsibilities.

Ruiz agreed that a copy of the legal agreement governing the site — which the state and federal governments have failed to produce for weeks — is “really relevant” to understanding what federal authority the state-run site is operating under.

“I don’t personally think that these agreements are difficult to procure,” Ruiz said.

In legal filings, a high-ranking Trump administration immigration official said earlier this month that the site is operating under the federal 287(g) program that grants local and state agencies immigration-enforcement powers typically reserved for the federal government.

At the hearing Monday, Ruiz said he wanted to see a copy of the 287(g) agreement. Otherwise, he said, “the court may be walking into a bit of a black hole about the interplay between the federal and state authorities.”

Attorneys representing the DeSantis and Trump administrations told the judge it will take time to provide the court that information.

“I am not prepared today to say definitively what our position is” in relation to the 287(g) authority question, said Nick Meros, an attorney representing the DeSantis administration. “We certainly have an idea, but I need to confirm that.”

Marlene Rodriguez, an attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office representing the Department of Homeland Security in the case, said she will need to check with the agency about whether there are any “privacy concerns” related to the release of the agreement. She added that she would look into it “right away,” as Ruiz said insight into such an agreement would be important to understand as the case moved forward.

Eunice Cho, an attorney with the ACLU, said the matter is of “utmost urgency.” She said officers at the immigration detention center are already trying to “force people to sign deportation orders” without access to lawyers and without the ability to challenge their detention because there is no federal immigration court assigned yet to oversee Alligator Alcatraz cases.

“This is unprecedented,” Cho said. “We have never seen a situation where hundreds of people are being held without charge, without access to immigrant courts under legal authority that had not been explained.”

The plaintiffs have asked the judge to force DHS to identify an immigration court that has jurisdiction over detainees. Ruiz did not make that determination at the Monday hearing, but said he wants to “move as quickly as possible given the circumstances on the ground.”

A hearing to consider oral arguments in the case has been scheduled for Aug. 18.

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